ABSTRACT
THE work of Kempf1 throws an interesting sidelight on psychoanalytic theory in relation to Personality. An ardent behaviourist, and a convinced believer in Freud’s doctrines, he attempts to find a physiological basis for his conclusions. He advances the thesis, that all overt behaviour is the direct result of the alterations in tension of autonomic segments. Under the term autonomic segments, he includes all the vegetative systems of the body, circulatory, respiratory, digestive, urinary, and genital; all the endocrine glands, and the vegetative nervous system, both sympathetic and autonomic. The various “segments,” digestive, circulatory, genital and the like, are subject to “affective cravings,” involving changes in the postural tensions of their musculature. By the postural tension, or tone of a muscle, is meant the degree of static contraction of that muscle, which is necessary, in conjunction with other muscles in a similar state of static contraction, to maintain the limb or the organ in its ordinary position of rest. Thus, the hand at rest usually maintains a position with the fingers semiflexed. To retain this posture, both flexors and extensors must maintain a certain degree of contraction. This static contraction is the postural tone. Sherrington2 demonstrated the existence of the postural tone of muscles, both striped and unstriped, and this varies with the variation in affective states. Thus, it is known that in the case of the stomach, hunger is accompanied by changes in the postural tension, amounting to definite contractions. Kempf maintains that these contractions are the direct cause of hunger, or in other words, that hunger is the perception of kinesthetic impulses arising from the change in postural tone of the stomach. Such changes of tension in the various autonomic segments represent a demand for satisfaction of the biological needs of an animal, for
the maintenance of the life of the individual on the one hand, and continuance of the race on the other. But, with the advance of complexity in the animal organism, it became necessary, if these needs were to be fulfilled, for the animal to shift itself about in the environment, in order to find the means of satisfaction. Hence, in the course of biological evolution it became requisite for the continuance of animal species that a “projicient system” should be developed. This consists of the central nervous system and muscular apparatus. To refer once more to the illustration afforded by the alterations of postural tone in the stomach which are accompanied by hunger, we have here a demand for satisfaction of an organic need. This demand corresponds to the Freudian “wish.” The “wish” or state of tension has an unpleasant affective value. According to the “pleasure principle,” this tension must be relieved, and the organism must find means to do so. These means can only be attained by interaction of organism with the environment, and by the establishment of two new apparati. Firstly, there must be established appropriate receptor patterns to respond to the stimuli representative of the wish for satisfaction, that is to say, in the case of hunger-suitable food. This receptor pattern, will be composed of an associated complex of sensory nerve endings, comprised in the various exteroceptive sense organs, whereby the appropriate food can be smelt, tasted, touched, seen, etc. Secondly, a correlated mechanism must be evolved whereby the food, from which these stimuli originate, may be approached and ingested. In addition, for the better furtherance of this object, it may be necessary to move the animal about in space so that the receptor pattern may be brought in contact with the suitable stimuli, and not merely left to respond if the said stimuli arrive in the neighbourhood. This may involve an active voluntary search for edibles, in the case of hunger, or for a mate, in the case of sexual cravings. An example may illustrate the sequence of events as follows. Certain alterations in postural tone of the stomach arise in response to metabolic requirements of certain fluids and solids. As the result of the kinesthetic impulses so aroused, hunger is experienced. The “affective craving” hunger facilitates certain receptors and their connexions, which respond to the various properties, colour, shape and odour of the orange which is lying on a neighbouring table. This combined with memory images of taste, and the general mass of experience
relating to orange, leads to the perception-orange, and further perhaps to the judgment-good to eat. Or the process may become more complicated if there is no orange or other food handy, and it becomes necessary to take some money from a drawer, go out of the house, and proceed to a shop and buy one. Once the orange has been acquired, certain muscular movements are brought into play, whereby the orange is seized, peeled and conveyed to the mouth, and so reaching the stomach, allays the hypertension. Thus the cycle is completed, the wish is fulfilled, pleasure is attained, and a state of quiescence ensues. Similar cycles may be traced from conditions of hypertension (appetitive), or hypotension (aversive), in the other autonomic segments, and do not require further elaboration. As may naturally be expected from a psycho-analytic enthusiast, the hypertension and hypotensions of the genital segment are held to influence behaviour in an overwhelming proportion of cases. The study of pathological personalities bears this out to a very great extent, and there can be no question that the same applies to more of the behaviour of normal individuals than many are willing to admit, for the tensions in the complicated patterns associated with sex do vary both frequently and violently. But the sex impulses become so commingled with other impulses in the composition of the personality, and in so doing there emerge such totally different and distinct qualities, that to analyse these behaviours and qualities to the level where the sex impulse entered into their composition, no more explains them, than hydrogen and oxygen explain water. We may, if we like, say that a diamond is nothing but carbon, and we may say that chivalry is nothing but an attempt to satisfy the affective craving of the genital segment, but such statements explain neither the one nor the other, for with a new relatedness, a new quality emerges. Kempf indeed gets over the difficulty of the modification of his primary affective cravings, by reference to the process of conditioning. Basing his arguments on this well-known process in physiology, demonstrated by Pawlow and others, he shows how the primary affective cravings are constantly met with resistances from the environment. The struggle between these resistances and the affective cravings leads to increasing efforts to control the environment. This necessitates the increase in skill, selfknowledge and self-control, and pari passu, the increase in
complexity of the projicient system. At first the affective cravings demand response to specific stimuli directly ministering to their needs, but in view of the conflicting interests, and demands of the different autonomic segments, and to the resistances opposed by the environment.they soon begin to seek quite a different set of stimuli, in response to which they more or less succeed in achieving mutual satisfaction. The conditioning process, therefore, leads to the development of new receptor patterns and new behaviour patterns, so that the apparent end in view may be very different from that which would subserve the direct satisfaction of the original affective craving. This leads to the process of sublimation, whereby the various needs of the individual are modified so as not to oppose each other, or the demands of the community. Where the process of conditioning does not proceed smoothly, the processes of repression, suppression, regression and the rest, arise. He lays particular stress on the influence of the family in conditioning the affective cravings of the young child. In Kempfs work, the conflict between the youth striving for emancipation, and age striving to maintain authority, is exemplified by a wealth of detail, both from mythology and literature and real life. In fact, from this point, Kempf follows the general trend of psycho-analytic doctrine, and reference to this does not need to be repeated here. In discussing the personality, Kempf insists on the conception of a unity which, in the light of the concept of emergence, is insisted on here. The development of such personality involves the sublimation of affective cravings and the correlation of projicient reactions. “From birth the autonomic apparatus, having been forced to abandon its parasitical attachment to the mother, begins its struggle of co-ordinating its projicient apparatus into an efficient instrument, with progressive refinements of self-control and skill of adaptation, in order to keep up with the standards of its rivals and the race. Upon the nature of the skilful co-ordination, and the conditioning of the cravings, depends the existence of the biological potency (of social influence and fitness, commercial and sexual prowess, and sexual potency)”. The object of this sublimation and correlation, he describes as the pursuit of goodness and happiness, which can only be obtained by a free outlet, whereby the demands of autonomic cravings can be met, when suitably modified to avoid friction with the requirements of the
environment. To achieve this goal, it is necessary that the individual should at once be adaptable and correlated, and that the requirements of the environment should not be too insistent and hard to surmount. There can be no question that in modern civilized society there is a tendency for the requirements of the environment to present too great an obstacle for all but the best and strongest personalities. If the personality is going to succeed in reacting to the environment, it must act as a unity. All the segmental affective cravings must react in a correlated way, otherwise dissociation takes place, and the possibility of adaptation ceases. If the dictates of society repress the proper development of any one of these affective cravings, then the whole personality becomes lopsided, and a neurosis of some sort is apt to occur. The most common mental conflict in the individual is that between the demands of these affective cravings, and the effort to retain the approval and esteem of the family, or of society in general. In the normal healthy individual a working compromise is reached ; in the neurotic, the affective craving is repressed, and an effort is made to retain the esteem of society and the self, at the expense of a craving which will not be denied. This leads to the inner dissociation, which brings the individual up against himself; the state of mind so characteristic of the neurotic. When the desire to retain social esteem is repressed, then the affective cravings are allowed full play, and a conflict arises between the ego and the community. For the ego, this means asocial delinquency; for the community, an enemy who must be suppressed.
